People power a blast From the past
LAST week Guy Barnett (who is paid about four times the wage of average Tasmanians) unashamedly announced an almost 12 per cent increase in power prices.
I wondered if Lake Pedder had ultimately drowned in vain.
The whole motivation behind the grand vision of the legendary post-war premier “Electric Eric” Reece was to generate power for the people.
In the coldest state, affordable hydro-electricity was provided not just for public comfort. It was also to create skilled jobs in the manufacturing industries that were attracted to our Electric Island.
What was achieved for a time was a degree of selfreliance.
We had the power. We had the jobs. And, because the water came free from the heavens, we were insulated from the pricing regimes of less happy lands.
Such was the gospel according to Electric Eric, and for decades it seemed to work.
But you never know what you’ve got until it’s gone — or until someone stuffs up.
Generations of Tasmanians made considerable sacrifices to achieve a high degree of electric self-sufficiency, or what appeared to be, until now.
The drowning of the exquisitely beautiful original Lake Pedder probably best symbolises the environmental price we paid, though there were many other costs, mostly known only to bushwalkers, hunters and trout fishermen who ventured into the hard places.
There was a human sacrifice, too. Hydro-electric schemes required men prepared to work and sometimes die in remote hardship. In many cases, families accompanied them, living in isolated and hastily constructed settlements carved out of the wilderness.
My earliest memories were of Tarraleah township, marooned in the thickest bush high on the Central Plateau.
Hobart seemed far away, sometimes a day’s drive through deep snow drifts on rough dirt roads. Often there were no bridges and I remember the excitement in the car when water swirled in beneath my feet as we drove through flooded river fords.
My oldies saw themselves as pioneers, but when I had to go to school they reluctantly moved to the cheap and bright hydro-electric lights of Launceston. But I missed “Tarra”. I haven’t always agreed with the Hydro, but I was always a Hydro kid.
Enough with the reminiscing. Those innocent times are long gone. Those were the days when our politicians thought they were running the state for people who live here, rather than for people who don’t.
Today we are part of a National Electricity Market, which includes every state but Western Australia.
And, refresh my memory, which state isn’t confronting soaring power bills?
That’s right. Those parochial Sandgropers in the West decided they would go it alone, keeping an allocation of their vast gas reserves for local use and selling the rest at a massive profit.
How did a comparatively energy-rich, small state such as Tasmania get into the present mess? Today the lowest-paid workers in the Commonwealth, in a winter so cold it’s a tourist attraction, are having to pay through their runny noses to get warm.
Meanwhile, we have an energy gold rush. Distantly owned wind farms are springing up like mushrooms, or should that be like the
Generations of Tasmanians made to considerable sacrifices degree of achieve a high self-sufficiency, electric to be. or what appeared
poisonous toadstools no one wants in their backyard?
Having gotten in early with hydro power, renewables do seem sensible for Tasmania, and surely they would be if we could only go back to Electric Eric’s days. Back to when we ran Tasmania for Tasmanians.
Are we sure one interconnector to the mainland isn’t enough? Somewhere someone (guess who) has to find $3.5bn to pay for the planned second one.
The energy carpetbaggers have descended on our island, but they won’t pay for the infrastructure. Instead, they deluge us in greenwash to explain why we should pay.
Windmills will make water run uphill, and pumped storage will make our state “the battery of the nation”.
Might I suggest if we have to pay the equivalent of three or four AFL stadiums for Project Marinus, we will be more like the financial “assault and battery” of the nation.
We are told the Marinus interconnector will “unlock a second, green wave of hydroindustrialisation” but not told what industries those will be.
Is it really likely that the old dream of using Tasmanian power to locate manufacturing industries in Tasmania will come to pass a second time?
Or was that the souffle that rose only once?
Are we not being gamed here?
Surely the green power we manufacture will be exported and sold at premium prices on a remote energy market.
Will we reserve some of that energy, like WA, for our own use? Or will we pay the national or the world price, as seems to be already happening?
If we don’t cop the price rises, then Guy Barnett, the Minister for Energy and Renewables, warned a little obscurely this week of
“unintended consequences”.
I would warn the minister that the Liberals need to clearly explain and soon demonstrate the benefits to Tasmanians of paying more for our power.
If we sell it to warm or cool others and create jobs elsewhere, then he should know the “unintended consequences” will probably be Premier Dean Winter.
OK, I’m getting ahead of things and a bit of dirty water has yet to flow through the turbine but, seriously, how can we become a profitable energy-producing state when we own neither the energy nor indeed the wind generators?
We only host them and, in many communities, reluctantly. Critical questions for Tasmanians are — WHETHER or not to withdraw, like Western Australia, from the National Energy Market?
HOW to ensure that corporations controlled by foreign governments, especially hostile ones such as China, don’t gain control of strategic energy production and supply?
OUR present government can’t manage to build a fun park at Macquarie Point, so in these uncertain times should they risk punching way above their weight with a much more complex multibillion-dollar energy venture?
AND best for last, if Marinus goes ahead, what’s really in it for us?
Have I ever used so many question marks in one column? But aren’t questions all we have?
Given the unintended consequences and the unknown unknowables, shouldn’t we at least ask?
Charles Wooley is a journalist, writer, TV personality and a former reporter with 60 Minutes.